Dan Beighton Racing

D B Racing (Dan Beighton Racing)

John’s Motorcycle News has long supported and encouraged businesses and enthusiasts within the motorcycling fraternity and when we come across genuine people who are supporting others less fortunate than themselves and who are also promoting motorcycling at their own expense we try to do our best to help them achieve their own goals.

We are therefore delighted to announce our sponsorship of Dan Beighton of “Dan Beighton Racing” for his debut as a newcomer, racing in the Isle of Man in August 2016. Dan is entered in the Newcomer A & Senior Manx GP categories, so we wish him a safe ride with every success.

Dan is based in Horsham, Sussex and whilst also running a successful plumbing business Dan has found time to work as part of a very enthusiastic team for Talan Motorsport (see our other articles about Talan Skeels-Piggins, Talan Motorsport and The Bike Experience), as well as looking after a family and building his race bike.

We met Dan at one of our fund raising events whilst he was working with Talan’s team and found him to be a great guy worthy of any support that we can give him.

He is one of those hard working blokes who spends every penny they can and many long hours working from their garages stripping and building their own machines, living breathing and dreaming of one day entering the ultimate road race circuit around the Isle of Man. None of which comes cheap!

Dan Beighton Racing started in 2013 with Thundersport, racing their home built Kawasaki ZX7R in the Golden Era Superbike class. Their “rookie” year saw them achieve results into the top twenty most of the time, out of forty plus top riders. They obtained their Clubman licence at the end of the 2013 season (despite missing some rounds due to injury).

Their Clubman season continued, but now they were sometimes finishing in the top ten, with the race bike progressing all the time as a result of all of the additional improvements made to it. So much so, that they finished in the high teens by the end of the season, after only competing in five of the available nine rounds.

Their licence was upgraded to National level by the end of the season, which is when the team started to consider an application for the Manx. Dan decided to become an ACU (Auto-Cycle Union) coach with Bemsee (British Motorcycle Racing Club, BMCRC, aka “Bemsee”) after visiting the NEC (National Exhibition Centre) and talking to the guys on the TT stand.

More recently our good friend, Mick Grant, spent some valuable time with Dan (see our article “JMN’s 2016 Fund Raising at Mallory Park – Sponsor List”, in our Charity section) to provide him with some valuable knowledge and advice regarding his own experiences whilst racing in the Isle of Man.

Dan Beighton Racing was looking good and under their short circuit race number, #78, they were now getting into the top ten, once reaching a fourth position and so Dan decided to enrol in the Manx GP Newcomers course in February 2016, which he highly recommends. Dan’s comments were that this course was “priceless” and he has to extend a huge “thanks” to Jim Hunter for putting on such a superb course.

To gain more experience Dan travelled over to the Isle of man for the 2016 TT,in his own words to “soak up the atmosphere and get a real good feel of things”. At this stage he was still unsure if his entry application for the Manx had been successful or not.

Dan did several laps around the mountain course, (this time in a car), in much quieter conditions, in the early hours of the morning in order to further experience and get a feel for the 37.7 mile long course, which he says helped him immensely to further understand the course. Dan has also been working closely with another Kawasaki Race Team that of Darren Cooper, who Dan wishes to thank for “taking him under his wing” so to speak and showing him the ropes.

Dan reckons Darren is definitely one to watch, as he stood out at last years (2015) meeting.

Upon returning to the mainland from the TT Dan finally had the email he had be dreaming of…………

In Dan’s own words “They were in”!!!

Dan appreciates that, without doubt, entry into the 2016 Manx GP is going to be the most demanding challenge that they have set out on so far. Dan and his team have been totally submerged in the whole thing. They have been eating, sleeping and breathing the Manx day in day out!

Talking of the team, a special mention must go to Dan’s wife, Janine, who is the team manager, Darren Marshall, mechanic, and Steve Jones, mechanic at Talan Motorsport (who has very kindly given up his time to crew for the team at the Manx). Not forgetting Dan’s mum, Shirley Beighton, who deserves a massive mention for helping out in more ways than one, Stephan Morris of Virtual UC Ltd who has been their title sponsor since 2015 and Steve Jordan of Steve Jordan Motorcycles www.stevejordanmotorcycles.co.uk who has been a “Godsend” in helping the team with engine building. Dan is obviously a popular guy with many good friends around who are willing to help him, ourselves included.

Anyway, we sincerely wish “Dan Beighton Racing” safe riding and every success and we would invite any of our readers to look out for Dan and his team and lend them your support in any way that you can.

So often the big stars attract our attention and that of the media, but the Manx GP has always been about the “little guys” working out of their own garages, scraping together every penny they have to live the dream and race on the most unique and famous road circuit in the world, at the Isle of Man.